Nature & Invention google docs:
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
People and Places
Dover Beach
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold was English, and he lived in Laleham.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
War and Hope
Both poems have very unclear meanings, that could be interpreted differently. "Outwitted" is both simple and it makes you think of all the different meanings there could be behind it. "I Have A Rendezvous with Death" has a morbid theme, but also could have different meanings interpreted by the reader."I Have A Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger is most relevant today, because everyone has their own rendezvous.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Love and Loneliness
I have been one acquainted with the night.*
If only I could see the light.
Beneath the stark night sky,
The only thought a silent wish to die.
A lone figure outlined by the light,
Of the golden windows, what a sight.
As we walked through the dark,**
Lighted windows made mysteries,
Made a hundred private worlds.
And a thousand unspoken words.
Hanging suspended in the air,
Like stars in the ominous night sky.
* Line borrowed from "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost
** Line borrowed from "Memory" by David Helwig
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